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I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

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Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#21

Post by timtadh »

I think the point is: his salary while not high by SF was high in nearly any other location in the US. In any other location, he and his family could live how they wanted. In any other location, have a $40,000 car instead of a $10,000 or less car is a perfectly reasonable. In any other location, eating out more than once a month would be perfectly reasonable. Having a expensive hobby racing cars is reasonable, just not in SF.

The point of the article wasn't that I am poor you should feel sad for me. The point was: look the Bay Area is so expensive that it is impossible to afford unless you are making an extremely high salary. A good salary isn't enough, a high salary isn't enough, it has to be extreme otherwise you will need to make life style sacrifices to live in the Bay Area.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#22

Post by pmiller2 »

scarby wrote: post #5

Barely breaking 6 figures is an entry level engineers salary in the bay area. Also in the world that I live in single income families are the exception rather than the rule.

He was barely breaking 6 figures in 2009. I wasn't around the Bay Area then, but that strikes me probably significantly better than entry level at the time, given the way rents have gone.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#23

Post by colmvp »

Grishnakh wrote: post #10
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

What the title should read is "couldn't afford a lifestyle I felt was befitting someone making six figures in the bay area"

If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?

I'd hardly call buying a car that's less than 40k "near-poverty.'

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#24

Post by noer »

I don't know, it seems like a lot of this guy's problems are totally within his control. I sort of assume he's the only income source for his family, but also has an expensive hobby he doesn't want to give up and also wants to live a life of (somewhat) luxury. I mean, I get it, kids and the Bay Area are expensive, but I think there are better examples of "the cost of living in the Bay Area is out of control" than a guy with a reasonably good job and an expensive hobby he doesn't want to give up.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#25

Post by cmiles74 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #15
Grishnakh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?

Let's not exaggerate. $100K/year in the Bay Area (as a single person) isn't living it up, but it's not "a near-poverty lifestyle." It's a "living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," lifestyle but it's eating good food with a roof over your head. If that sounds like poverty, well, you should see real poverty sometime.

The choice of words was poor, but living with roomates and commuting an hour when your salary is $100/year is, in my opinion, unreasonable. There's good food and roofing available all over the country.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#26

Post by colmvp »

timtadh wrote: post #21

I think the point is: his salary while not high by SF was high in nearly any other location in the US. In any other location, he and his family could live how they wanted. In any other location, have a $40,000 car instead of a $10,000 or less car is a perfectly reasonable. In any other location, eating out more than once a month would be perfectly reasonable. Having a expensive hobby racing cars is reasonable, just n…

Well yeah. That rings true for a lot of popular cities... is that really edifying? Fundamentally before moving to a new city, you can calculate your salary minus expenses and see how much you have to sacrifice to make it viable to save money. It was practically the first thing I did when looking for an apartment in NYC after taking a new job.

Especially with major cities, having a single income family is only viable if one person earns a lot and/or the couple has no intention of buying a property and settling down.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#27

Post by tw04 »

timtadh wrote: post #21

I think the point is: his salary while not high by SF was high in nearly any other location in the US. In any other location, he and his family could live how they wanted. In any other location, have a $40,000 car instead of a $10,000 or less car is a perfectly reasonable. In any other location, eating out more than once a month would be perfectly reasonable. Having a expensive hobby racing cars is reasonable, just n…

Just to be clear - racing cars is EXPENSIVE if you're even remotely serious. You're talking about blowing easily $2,000 per weekend of racing, and that's if you're operating on a budget and already own the car.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#28

Post by zeveb »

> I’d been granted a few thousand shares when I got hired, and after the company had its IPO in 2012, I sold all the shares that had vested. … We could finally rent a house for just our family, no roommate. In order to afford that, selling stock became necessary every quarter it vested. Obviously, this is not the path to financial security, but when the sum of money that lands in front of you isn’t life changing, you look to the short term and what it can do for you right now.

What‽ Selling capital in order to finance daily survival is terrible: the entire point of a working life is to accumulate capital in order to finance a retirement.

Not having a roommate was, literally, a luxury he and his family could not afford.

> But for a person with a family of four who has a certain lifestyle that they want to try to maintain (a niceish $40,000 car, the ability to go out once a month and leave the kids with a sitter, a house that wasn't last remodeled in ’70s, etc.) it can be difficult.

If you have a wife and two kids, then maybe buying $40,000 cars is a mistake. Maybe getting a fancy house is a mistake. True fact: children survived into adulthood just fine in the 1970s. Part of being an adult is knowing how to differentiate between essentials and luxuries.

Honestly, with his sort of (admitted) short-term financial mismanagement, I don't think he could survive on six figures in Dallas, Houston, Denver, Kansas City or anywhere else. He'd make the same sort of bad decisions, perhaps with a longer runway to ruin.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#29

Post by colmvp »

cmiles74 wrote: post #25
pmiller2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not exaggerate. $100K/year in the Bay Area (as a single person) isn't living it up, but it's not "a near-poverty lifestyle." It's a "living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," lifestyle but it's eating good food with a roof over your head. If that sounds like poverty, well, you should see real poverty sometime.

The choice of words was poor, but living with roomates and commuting an hour when your salary is $100/year is, in my opinion, unreasonable. There's good food and roofing available all over the country.

But the living expenses in cities like SF and NYC are entirely different compared to the rest of the country. 100k is not really a magical number aside from the fact that it's six digits instead of five. You see similar things in other countries.

Re: I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

#30

Post by VLM »

pmiller2 wrote: post #15
Grishnakh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?

Let's not exaggerate. $100K/year in the Bay Area (as a single person) isn't living it up, but it's not "a near-poverty lifestyle." It's a "living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," lifestyle but it's eating good food with a roof over your head. If that sounds like poverty, well, you should see real poverty sometime.

""living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," but it's eating good food with a roof over your head."

That sounds like me as a part time student / part time grocery store minimum wage shelf stocker around 1990 in the greater Chicago land area (well, within a very distant orbit of Chicago). I suppose most people would have considered me very poor at that time. I was on no government programs (other than uni student loans like everyone else). I had no medical insurance but I ate good food when I wanted. On the other hand I couldn't afford good steak, it was cheaper, but good and healthy, food. I was financially very hand to mouth no savings couldn't afford to "go out". Probably why I don't go out drinking now, never got in the habit when I was young. There are certainly poorer people, but the best case scenario being I'd have to downgrade to a starving student lifestyle is incredibly unappealing.

In summary it sounds like if you work full time plus at Facebook in CA (admittedly in 2016), your standard of living will be the same as working part time as a grocery store shelf stocker outside CA (admittedly in 1990). Of course my commute was better, but the CA guy has already graduated so he doesn't have to balance work and school like I did, so it kinda balances out.

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